Dery, who is chairman of the Shas party, served as interior minister between 1988 and 1993, under prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yizhak Rabin. He was convicted of bribery and fraud in 2000 and served 22 months in prison. He regained the Shas leadership a decade after his release.

Initially the police investigated suspicions that the Dery family received hundreds of thousands of shekels from various business figures.